Introduction to Elie
Wiesel’s Night
The Holocaust and other Background
Information
The Holocaust: Terms to Know
 Holocaust:
 burnt offering; a sacrifice consumed by fire
 Genocide:
 The systematic annihilation of a whole people or nation
 Antisemitism:
 Prejudice against or hatred of all Jews
 Ghetto:
 a confined area of a city in which members of a
minority group are compelled to live because of social,
legal, or economic pressure.
The Holocaust: Terms to Know
 Totalitarianism:
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is the total control of a country in the
government’s hands
It subjugates individual rights.
It demonstrates a policy of aggression.
 SS:

German abbreviation for Schutzstaffel
(protection squads). A paramilitary formation
of the Nazi party initially created to serve as
bodyguard to Hitler and other Nazi leaders.
The Holocaust: Terms to Know
 Aryan:
 in Nazi Germany, nonJewish and non-Gypsy
Caucasians were
labeled Aryan. They
usually had features
such as blonde hair
and blue eyes and
were considered to be
the most superior of
Aryans, members of a
“master race.”
The Holocaust: Terms to Know
 Concentration Camp:
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Concentration Camps were established by the
Nazi regime and managed by the SS to detain
and, if necessary, kill so-called enemies of the
state (i.e., Jews, Gypsies, etc.)
Living conditions in camps were extremely poor.
Prisoners slept in barracks that were small and
extremely close together.
The buildings were poorly constructed and
unsanitary.
More on Concentration Camps
 Prisoners spent
around 10 hours a
day working at hard
labor.
 Then, they had to
stand for long roll call
assemblies, stand in
lines for meager
rations (typically less
than 1700 calories),
and stand in line for
the wash room.
The Holocaust: Terms to Know
 Auschwitz:
the largest Nazi
concentration camp
complex, located 37
miles west of
Kraków, Poland
 Birkenau:
 also known as
Auschwitz II.
Birkenau contained
the large-scale killing
apparatus at
Auschwitz.

Jewish Terms
 Judaism:

the monotheistic religion (belief in one god) of
the Jews, having its ethical, ceremonial, and
legal foundation in the precepts of the Old
Testament and in the teachings and
commentaries of the rabbis as found chiefly in
the Talmud
 Talmud:

the most significant collection of Jewish oral
tradition
Jewish Terms
 Torah:

The first five
books of the
Hebrew scriptures
Jewish Terms
 Synagogue

A Jewish place of
worship
Jewish Terms
 Cabbala (Kaballah)
 the
religious mystical system of
Judaism claiming an insight into
divine nature
 Kaddish
 A prayer recited in the daily
synagogue services and by mourners
after the death of a close relative.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1933
 Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party gains control of
the German government.
 Nazi: The National Socialist Workers’
Party
 The Nazis decree a 3 day boycott of
Jewish businesses.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1933
 The Nazis establish a concentration camp at Dachau,
the first of many prison camps where they will confine
communists, socialists, trade unionists, homosexuals,
Gypsies, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other
"undesirables."
 Nazi laws remove Jews from German courts and civil
service positions, limit the number of Jews who can
attend German universities, remove Jews from
German college faculties, and expel Jews from
German cultural life (i.e., film, theater, literature,
music, journalism).
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1933
 Jewish food preparation rituals are outlawed.
 Nazi laws require involuntary sterilization of
mixed race children, the physically or
mentally handicapped, Gypsies, Blacks, and
others deemed racially or genetically
"inferior."
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1935
 The Nazi's "Nuremburg
Laws" prohibit marriage
and extramarital
relations between Jews
and non-Jews, revoke
the citizenship and civil
rights of German Jews,
and forbid Jews to
display the German
flag.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1938
 Nazi laws require Jews to report their
financial assets and property.
 The Nazi government assumes control of all
Jewish religious institutions.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1938
 Nazi laws forbid Jews to
practice law or
medicine, and require
Jews to carry special
identification cards at all
times.
 Jews are ordered to
turn in their passports
so they can be stamped
"Jew."
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1938
 Kristallnacht

("The Night of Broken Glass," November 9): a
government-sanctioned night of anti-Jewish
riots, during which synagogues are burned,
Jewish homes looted, Jewish businesses
destroyed, and thousands of Jews beaten,
tortured, arrested, or killed.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1938
 Nazi police arrest approximately 30,000 Jewish men
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for deportation to concentration camps.
Deportation: the removal of people from their areas
of residency for purposes of resettlement elsewhere.
Nazi laws ban Jewish newspapers and journals,
expel Jewish children from German schools, and bar
Jews from theaters, museums, and other public
gathering places.
The Nazi government closes all Jewish businesses
and prohibits further Jewish business activity.
The government imposes a tax on Jews to pay for
Kristallnacht property damage.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1939
 The Nazi Gestapo assumes control of all Jewish
affairs.
 Gestapo: The German State Police
 The Nazis establish detailed procedures for
confiscating Jewish property.
 Nazi Invasion of Poland (September 1): Nazi
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) follow the
advancing German army and execute thousands of
Poles, whom the Nazis regard as "subhuman."
Thousands more are shipped to Germany as slave
laborers or relocated within Poland to provide open
space for German settlement.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1939
 Nazi forces round up approximately 3 million
Polish Jews and confine them in urban
ghettos.
 Polish Jews are required to wear the Star of
David.
 In Germany, the Nazis initiate a euthanasia
program to kill institutionalized and
handicapped patients who are deemed
incurable.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1940
 Nazi Conquest of Europe: Anti-Jewish
policies are imposed in Nazi-occupied
Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
Luxembourg, France, and in other European
countries under Nazi domination.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1941
 Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22):
Einsatzgruppen following the advancing army
exterminate Jews, Gypsies, communists, and
other "undesirables"; more than one million
people are massacred.
 Extermination camps with gas chambers for
mass executions are constructed in Poland at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec,
Sobibor, Majdanek, and Treblinka.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1941
 Nazi leaders, meeting in Wansee outside
Berlin, adopt a policy of mass execution as
"the final solution of the Jewish question."
 Deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied and
Nazi-dominated countries across Europe to
the extermination camps in Poland begins.
Timeline of Holocaust Events: 1945
 The Nazi's extermination camps,
concentration camps, and forced labor camps
remain in operation until Germany surrenders
on May 7.
Elie Wiesel: The author of Night
Elie Wiesel
 Born 1928 in Sighet, Romania
 Deported to concentration camps during
WWII
 Parents and little sister killed; two older
sisters survived
 Survived Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, and
Gleiwitz
 Liberated in April 1945
Elie Wiesel
 1955: published Night
 1978: appointed chair of Presidential
Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council)
 1985: awarded Congressional Gold Medal of
Achievement
 1986: awarded Nobel Peace Prize
 Continues to write plays, memoirs, essays
and short stories today